Pushing Perfect(38)

“What makes you think he’ll be willing to talk to you? He’s mad at both of us.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got the history. Let me try, anyway.”

“Good luck,” I said, and went to go sit with the Brain Trust.

They looked surprised to see me, which was understandable. “What an honor,” Arthur said. His black hair was as disheveled as ever, though he still constantly ran his hands through it to try to smooth it out. Julia and David had discovered the joy/grossness of PDA and ignored me to make out.

“I’ve just been branching out a little,” I said. “Is it okay for me to sit here?”

“Sure. It’s not like I have anyone else to talk to.” He glanced over at the liplock. “Things have escalated, as you can see.”

We started talking about classes, as if I’d never left. But it was different now. I saw everyone through the filter of Blocked Sender: Could this person be capable? Could this person hate me? Arthur and I had never been anything more than acquaintances, and his parents were Harvard alums so I probably wasn’t even competition for him, really. He had a big crush on a girl in orchestra with him, so it wasn’t like he was pining away, angry at me for not being into him. Julia had tried to get us together a while back, when she and David were sneaking around thinking the rest of us didn’t know, but he’d made it clear I wasn’t his type. Which was fine; he wasn’t mine either.

He was safe. He wasn’t Blocked Sender.

“I heard SAT scores are coming out this week,” he said.

“They’re supposed to. Here’s hoping I didn’t tank it.” I raised my carton of milk in a mock toast.

“You didn’t.” He sounded confident. I wished I could be too.

“I’ll find out one way or another soon enough,” I said.

He reached over to Julia’s lunch tray and started eating her fries. “What?” he said when I made a face at him. “She won’t notice. I’ve gotten double fries for weeks now.”

He was right that Julia and David didn’t seem to notice anything. Or require air. I could see over their heads to where Alex and Raj were sitting. I could tell they were arguing, though their heads were low and close together. They were probably whispering to keep Justin from hearing. I hoped she was able to convince him to talk to us. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that he wasn’t involved, that I’d been wrong to ever think he was. It made me feel terrible.

“You should go back over there,” Arthur said. He didn’t sound mean about it, just matter-of-fact. “It’s where you’d rather be, isn’t it?”

“I’m happy here,” I said.

I wasn’t getting any better at lying.

Alex met me at the door of the cafeteria on my way out. “He’s still mad but he’s coming around,” she said. “He said he’ll meet us later this week or over the weekend. You around?”

“Doing nothing but waiting for my stupid SAT scores,” I said.

“You’re going to do great,” she said. “I’ll let you know when I hear from him.”

At least he was willing to talk to us. For that, I could be patient. I was just worried that Blocked Sender would give me more instructions when I hadn’t managed to pull off the last ones yet.

Back to waiting.

I spent so much time checking and rechecking my phone for texts that I wasn’t at all prepared for Wednesday afternoon when the email popped up from the Educational Testing Service. My SAT scores were available, it said, and told me where to log in.

I’d been home from school a couple of hours, sitting on the living room couch surrounded by books, trying in vain to study for finals but really chewing my nails over what Blocked Sender would tell me to do next. But the ETS email jolted me back into reality, or at least the reality I wanted to be in. I wanted my only source of stress to be finals and SATs and college applications; I already missed the days when I thought those were my biggest problems.

I ran upstairs and got on my computer. I clicked through all the menus, typed in my username and password, and waited for the page to load. Normally the internet around here was lightning fast—we were in Silicon Valley, after all—but with every high school student who’d taken the SAT online at once, things were bound to be slow.

Finally, though, the page showed up.

READING: 750

MATH: 780

ESSAY: 23

Holy crap, I’d nailed it.

NAILED IT!

I couldn’t believe it. I hit refresh a couple of times to make sure what I was seeing was real, then logged out and logged in again to check that I’d given the right information, that it wasn’t some sort of mistake. But there it was, over and over again.

The Novalert had really worked. All I’d needed to do was get over my own anxiety and fear. I didn’t know who to call first. Mom? Dad? Alex? They’d all made me promise to get in touch as soon as I’d heard. I decided to be a good daughter and check in with Mom. She must have been waiting to hear from me—the scores were supposed to come out after two weeks, and it had already been two and a half—because she picked up her cell right away, a rarity when she was at work.

“Honey, I’m so proud of you!” I could hear her beaming over the phone. I loved hearing her say it. “You’re a lock for Stanford now. Make sure to call your father, and we’ll go someplace nice for dinner tonight.”